Following 31 days of hunger strike in Tehran’s Evin prison, Iranian human rights defender Atena Daemi is in poor health, and requires immediate hospitalization. She has been unjustly imprisoned for her human rights activities since November 2016.

On 8 April, Iranian human rights defender Atena Daemi started a hunger strike in Evin prison in protest at the suspended prison sentences imposed on her sisters Hanieh and Ensieh for “insulting public officers on duty”. Both were sentenced to suspended prison terms of three months and one day by a criminal court in Tehran on 13 March. According to her family, Atena’s health has seriously deteriorated. She is believed to have lost about 12 kg of her weight. She is suffering from sustained nausea, vomiting, blood pressure fluctuations, and severe kidney pain. She briefly lost consciousness on 2 May. She was briefly transferred to a hospital outside prison on 8 May where some medical tests were carried out but she was returned to prison before even the test results came in. Doctors have warned that her kidney infection has reached critical levels and she needs immediate hospitalization.

Prison officials are failing to provide her with adequate medical care. On 29 April, Atena Daemi told her family that prison medical doctors keep writing in their reports that her health is normal and that she is “faking” her illness. In late April, she was transferred to the prison medical clinic to receive an electrocardiogram (ECG) test but the nurse, who was a male, refused to administer the test. The “justification” was that it is “inappropriate” for male medical staff to carry out these tests as patients are required to remove garments covering their chests. Women political prisoners often face additional layers of gender-specific discrimination when seeking access to medical care. On several occasions, women prisoners, who have experienced heart problems in the evening or at night, have been denied emergency ECG tests because the prison authorities have insisted that these tests must be carried out by female staff as patients are required to remove garments covering their chests.

Atena Daemi and her sisters’ lawyer is awaiting the Court of Appeals’ review of the convictions and sentences issued against them. The lawyer is concerned that the appeal may be rejected. Amnesty International considers that the trial that led to their convictions was unfair and that Hanieh and Ensieh Daemi would be prisoners of conscience if imprisoned, targeted simply on the basis of their family relationship with Atena Daemi.